How to be a professional speaker and what it takes
Today we take a look under the hood at the professional speaking industry. Below I share three misconceptions people have about the public speaking business.
Let's get into it.
Professional speakers are naturally gifted: FALSE. As with professional sports, being a paid speakers takes years of practice, training and reps. The easier someone makes it look on video, the more training they have behind them. The best speakers record themselves on video, review their performance, make tweaks, re-record and repeat the process hundreds of times. It's this commitment to their craft that allows speakers to begin charging higher speaking fees for their work.
Speaking gigs are booked through cold calling: Also false. While cold calling and outreach is an important tactic, it is rarely the most effective. 80% of paid speaking gigs come from someone who has seen you speak before. Let's take a moment to let that sink in. A speaker who walks into a room equipped with business cards, contact info to share, leave behind materials and a strategy for how to engage an audience after a speech - will bring in more leads than a month of cold calling. This applies to video and social media as well. Pro tip: Want to get more leads for speaking gigs? Get more video of yourself speaking out into the market and across your own personal network.
Agents handle everything: To quote Malcom Gladwell, one of the highest paid speakers in the world, "the break for me in speaking came when I realized it required about 10x more work that I was giving it." Speaking is a very personal business. The market is competitive and the speakers who are consistently producing content and showing their value will get the deals. Speakers and agents need to work as a team if they want to be successful. Speakers handle the self promotion and marketing. Agents handle leads, negotiating, scheduling, billing and post-event follow up. Every successful speaker has a team around them.
Want to take your speaking career to the next level? Practice in front of the camera, review, tweak, repeat. Use every speaking gig as a golden lead generation opportunity. Self-promote and self-market yourself like hell and have a team in place to handle the business stuff.
Keep them coming! I really enjoyed talking sales with the couple of folks who took me up on my 1-1 email advice offer last week. Contact me here: cejih@cgsportsmanagement.com
